Viktoria's Story: Three years on
Ukrainecast
BBC
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An old friend of the podcast, Viktoria Kovalenko, joins us in the studio. Viktoria has experienced the horrors of war first hand. Her husband and elder daughter were killed in front of her when they tried to escape the city of Chernihiv in 2022. Three years on she’s forging a new life with her four-year-old in the UK. She tells us how she’s adapting to life here, what she thinks about Donald Trump and how she remembers the family members she’s lost.
Plus - the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner, considers the international response to deadly missile strikes on Sumy over the weekend and how Steve Witkoff’s talks with Vladimir Putin went in Russia.
Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and Vitaly Shevchenko. The producers were Laurie Kalus and Ben Carter. The technical producer was Gareth Jones. The editor was Max Deveson. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480
You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:04.9 | Hello, it's 1,147 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. |
| 0:10.6 | And on Sunday, there was a devastating missile attack on the city of Sumi. |
| 0:15.6 | At 10, 15 in the morning, two missiles hit Sumi, which is a northeastern city in Ukraine. |
| 0:23.5 | 35 people dead, including two children, 117 injured. |
| 0:30.4 | Just as in Kravirik, 10 days before, there's evidence of cluster munitions being used, |
| 0:37.1 | and yet again, Russia claimed of killing dozens of Ukrainian military, but there's no evidence to support that. |
| 0:47.1 | President Zelensky's response, as you would expect, was scathing. |
| 0:50.9 | And yesterday, Donald Trump took some media questions. |
| 0:53.9 | Have you spoken to President Zelensky, sir, about his offer to purchase more |
| 0:58.0 | Patriot missile. Oh, I don't know. He's always looking to purchase missiles, you know. |
| 1:02.0 | He's against, listen, when you start a war, you've got to know that you can win the war, |
| 1:06.9 | right? You don't start a war against somebody that's 20 times your size and then hope that |
| 1:11.8 | people give you some missiles. If Donald Trump was here right now, Vitaly, and we played him that |
| 1:17.2 | clip back, what would you say to him in short order in terms of the facts? Well, who fired first? |
| 1:23.9 | I think it's as simple as that, who fired first first and it was Russia. And then on the same day, |
| 1:30.7 | in the same press conference in the White House, President Trump said this, millions of people |
| 1:35.6 | dead because of three people. Let's say Putin number one, let's say Biden, who had no idea |
| 1:40.3 | what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky. It's a war that should never have been allowed to start. Biden could have stopped it and Zelensky could have stopped it |
| 1:47.6 | and Putin should never have started it. Everybody's to blame. So a complete contradiction. |
| 1:52.9 | Not the first time. And later on in this episode, we will talk to the BBC security correspondent |
| 1:57.2 | Frank Gardner about what all that might mean for peace negotiations going forward. |
... |
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